Sometimes you must have asked yourself, “Why am I here? What is the purpose of my life?” The philosopher Aristotle noticed that everything changes or grows so as to achieve some goal. For example, acorns always grow into oak trees and never into anything else. (Unless, of course, they are eaten by squirrels--in which case they won’t grow at all!) Similarly, children always grow into adults.
Everything has a purpose, an inner goal that guides its development. We would be shocked if a kitten grew up to be a duck, or a fish suddenly took wing and flew in its adolescent years. Everything has a goal to mature into what kind of being it was originally designed to be.
Likewise, everything was designed to fulfill a certain purpose For example, a guitar is designed and made to produce beautiful music. When the guitar fulfills the purpose for which it was created, the guitar maker is happy and so, one might imagine, is the guitar. If, however, the guitar were used for knocking posts into the ground, it would be damaged and no longer would be able to fulfill its intended purpose. The maker would probably feel hurt and disappointed, and maybe angry. How about people? Ultimately, we cannot be happy without attaining a goal or purpose, but it must be the goal or purpose for which we were designed, the purpose that is embedded in our human nature. If we try to set for ourselves a different purpose, even if we fulfill it, we will not be happy for long. We will damage ourselves in some way. Money, power, knowledge or love? What is the purpose of life? Let’s think about what motivates people. As we saw in the chapter on happiness, everyone wants to be happy. But how do people go about seeking for it? Some people think that they will be happy if they become rich, so they make it their life's ambition and goal to make as much money as possible. But will money alone make us happy? There are many rich people in the world who are also quite unhappy. If Only I Could Win the Lottery!
Lots of people say this. They think that if they only won the big jackpot, their lives would be so much better and they would at last be happy. Is it true?
Charles Lynn Riddle, who won $1 million dollars in 1977. Five years later, he was divorced, had been sued several times, and wound up in jail for cocaine. Larry Frederick won half of a $33 million dollar jackpot in 1988. Soon he had so many lawsuits on his hands, his happiness level plummeted. Callie Rogers, a 16 year old foster child, admitted to "not having a happy moment" since winning 1.9 million pounds in the United Kingdom lottery. All Callie wanted to do was to live modestly and provide well for her foster parents. She did go on a trip abroad and spent some money on relatives and friends, but soon she found herself being fooled by friends and boyfriends and having fights with people she was close to--over money. "Two months ago I thought I was the luckiest teenager in Britain. But today I can say I have never felt so miserable."
The majority of lottery winners (55%) say that they are happier because they are more secure about their financial future and have fewer worries. Yet those who have won lesser amount are just as happy after their win than those winning huge amounts.
Researchers say, "It is as much the person's character as well as winning something which is the key to their happiness."
Others think knowledge is most important, so they bury their heads in books. Such people can become eccentric and isolated and lose the ability to form close relationships. Still others think power is the way to happiness. Their way of life is to try to dominate others. Such people are often deeply insecure and paranoid. Some people long to be famous. But many famous people have said they found life empty and meaningless; that they lost their way in life once they became famous. A notable example is rock star Kurt Cobain, who ended his own life after the pressures of fame made him miserable.
If we look at the question more deeply, we will realize that the most precious thing in life is love. No matter how wealthy, knowledgeable, powerful or famous you may be, unless you have someone with whom you can share your joy, your sorrow, your opinions, and your ideals, you are in truth poor.
Ultimately, each of us seeks a person with whom we can share our heart:
Someone we can love and care for;
Someone we can trust and to whom we can tell anything;
Someone with whom we can be ourselves and who will never betray us.
Someone who can understand us and to whom we can even entrust our life.
Someone we want to be with all the time and whom we miss when we are away.
Someone who is like us but about whom we are always discovering new things.
Someone who can be a friend.
Eventually we want to find someone we can marry and have a family with. Such love is the source of the deepest joy and happiness. Love is the highest value, because love is the source of life itself.
Along with love and life, we also want to have an ideal, something beyond ourselves for which to live, strive and maybe even give our lives to. When we have love, life and an ideal, everything seems possible and worthwhile. Without them, life is empty and meaningless. Then people begin to look for other ways to fill the void, such as through drinking, sex, food, money, power or knowledge.
What is it that we want?
What do you really want in life? What do you want to achieve and accomplish? What kind of person do you want to become? We have already asked these questions several times, so perhaps we can now draw a few conclusions. In the end, we can say that each person is seeking to achieve the following basic life goals:
• to grow up and become a person of mature character; • to marry and have a loving family • to make a worthwhile and lasting contribution to society
These are all creative acts. It is an astonishing fact that we create our own character. Our bodies will naturally grow to be fully mature human beings. But becoming a mature person on the inside involves our responsibility and choices.
Within us is the yearning to fulfill our potential and become persons of mature character, the first life goal. Sadly, many people, for one reason or another, never do this. They give up when faced by challenges they think they can’t overcome or they simply are not motivated to develop themselves. Instead of putting love and virtue at the center of their life, they allow negative emotions like greed, resentment, laziness or revenge to guide their decisions and actions.
Although we have the ability and responsibility to create our own selves, we cannot do this alone. In the chapter on relationships, you will remember we talked about how everything has two complementary purposes—an individual and whole purpose. We accomplish our individual purpose by living for the whole purpose, which requires developing healthy relationships with others—the second basic life goal.
It is in the family that we learn how to form relationships, through which we discover our own identity and develop our character. From the position of a child, sibling, spouse and parent, we learn how to love and be loved, to forgive and be forgiven, to disagree and be reconciled, to give and receive. We learn how to behave and have good manners. Through our family life, we learn how to make relationships and friendships too, which also help us to mature our character. A mature character is the foundation to achieve our second goal in life: to marry and create a loving family. Anthropologists have found that all human societies, everywhere in the world and throughout history, have had marriage and family as their basic social unit. The vast majority of human beings marries and has families. This would indicate that it is a natural human drive and desire—a basic life goal.
Loving families are not only important to us as individuals; they are the foundation for creating good communities, societies, nations, and a better world.
"Almost everybody in the world gets married--you know what I mean? In our town there aren't hardly any exceptions. Most everybody in the world climbs into their graves married." - Our Town, a play by Thornton Wilder
The third basic goal in life is to contribute something of value to our society and the natural world with our creative talents and professional skills. We love to experience the beauty of nature. We also seek to utilize the material resources of our world to create and play musical instruments, to sculpt, to paint, to design, and to build things. Creating gives us joy because it gives expression to our character and dreams. We also hope that what we create will please others. Nearly every artist looks forward to the day when he can hold an exhibition of his work and have it appreciated by others. People want to find fulfillment through their work, whether as a teacher, factory worker, farmer or businessman. They want to feel that they can create something, which is good and valued by others.
These three fundamental life goals encompass the entire realm of human experience. They present us with a standard and model of moral excellence we should all strive to fulfill. Attaining them involves practicing virtues, the most encompassing of which is altruistic or true love—love which seeks the benefit of others rather than just ourselves. In the coming lessons we will explore how to achieve each of these life goals.
Questions for Discussion
Have you ever thought about the purpose of life?
Does everything have a purpose?
Who determines the purpose of something?
In what way are you creating yourself and the world around you?
Do we all have the same purpose or different purposes?
In which way are our purposes the same and in which way are they different?
In which ways does a person create the kind of person he is and will become?
How much are we responsible for developing ourselves and how much does the environment influence us?
Can you think of somebody who grew up in difficult circumstances yet still achieved great things? What did he or she do to develop a positive personality?
Is there a connection between maturity and the ability to love?
Exercise: “The Wrong Purpose”
The following story is a fictionalized account:
A plane is flying somewhere over the vast rain forest near the Amazon River in South America. Suddenly an engine explodes, ripping a big whole in the bottom of the plane where the cargo is stored. Many suitcases and bags fall out of the plane into the impenetrable jungle of tropical plants and trees. A few seconds later another much bigger explosion occurs, totally ripping the plane apart. Nobody survives the plane crash.
Now it happens that in this part of the rain forest there lives a tribe of natives that has never been discovered by the outside world. The tribe, for its part, has no idea that there exists such a thing as an outside world. They believe that all these suitcases and bags that suddenly fall like rain from the sky are a gift from the gods.
As they start to investigate these heavenly gifts, however, they are not always so sure how best to use them. For instance, they find a guitar without any strings that—packed safely as it was in a strong case— miraculously survived intact the impact with the ground. The natives try several uses for the guitar. First, they use it as a tool to catch butterflies, then as a paddle for their canoes, and finally as a club to chase down monkeys. None of this works very well, and eventually the guitar breaks apart. The pieces are then used as firewood. The guitar strings, which the natives find neatly rolled up in a packet inside the case, come in more handy. One girl immediately recognizes the value of these strings and, after a while, many girls in the village are wearing them as necklaces, some with computer disks or music cassettes strung on them.
One clever boy discovers how to pull film out of its cartridge but then can’t figure out what to do with it. An old man who finds a camera is fond of music and becomes really fascinated by the metallic click of the shutter each time he winds up the camera and then pushes the release. The camera immediately becomes his favorite musical instrument. Not quite as happy is a girl who finds a pair of skates. Even though she has never seen shoes before, she quickly figures out that the skates are meant to be put on one's feet. But as she is trying to climb a tree wearing the skates, which to her look like some kind of claws, she falls down and breaks her leg. Even more unfortunate are two boys who find a gun in a briefcase. As they investigate it, one boy pulls the trigger and the bullet strikes the other boy in the shoulder. Many of the natives are witnesses to this incident, causing the tribe to break into a panic.
The medicine men discuss the event and decide that the gun is a god that has become angry. They call it "Boom-Boom". In order not to upset Boom-Boom again, they start to worship the gun and make offerings to it every day.
All these useful things became useless and even harmful in the hands of those who did not understand the purpose of them.
Questions for Discussion
1. Can you think of some other things that would be damaged or malfunction if they were not used for the purpose for which they were created? Be specific.
2. If all man-made items have been created for a specific purpose, could it be that human beings themselves were created for a specific purpose?
Reflection Exercise: “Fulfilling Your Purpose in Life”
Reflect on the ways in which you are seeking to fulfill the three purposes of life as described in this lesson. How have you been doing so far? How do you foresee yourself fulfilling these purposes in the future? Are you strong in some of these and weak in others? Where do you feel you need to make more effort.
Everything has a purpose, an inner goal that guides its development. We would be shocked if a kitten grew up to be a duck, or a fish suddenly took wing and flew in its adolescent years. Everything has a goal to mature into what kind of being it was originally designed to be.
Likewise, everything was designed to fulfill a certain purpose For example, a guitar is designed and made to produce beautiful music. When the guitar fulfills the purpose for which it was created, the guitar maker is happy and so, one might imagine, is the guitar. If, however, the guitar were used for knocking posts into the ground, it would be damaged and no longer would be able to fulfill its intended purpose. The maker would probably feel hurt and disappointed, and maybe angry.
How about people? Ultimately, we cannot be happy without attaining a goal or purpose, but it must be the goal or purpose for which we were designed, the purpose that is embedded in our human nature. If we try to set for ourselves a different purpose, even if we fulfill it, we will not be happy for long. We will damage ourselves in some way.
Money, power, knowledge or love?
What is the purpose of life? Let’s think about what motivates people. As we saw in the chapter on happiness, everyone wants to be happy. But how do people go about seeking for it? Some people think that they will be happy if they become rich, so they make it their life's ambition and goal to make as much money as possible. But will money alone make us happy? There are many rich people in the world who are also quite unhappy.
If Only I Could Win the Lottery!
Lots of people say this. They think that if they only won the big jackpot, their lives would be so much better and they would at last be happy. Is it true?
Charles Lynn Riddle, who won $1 million dollars in 1977. Five years later, he was divorced, had been sued several times, and wound up in jail for cocaine. Larry Frederick won half of a $33 million dollar jackpot in 1988. Soon he had so many lawsuits on his hands, his happiness level plummeted. Callie Rogers, a 16 year old foster child, admitted to "not having a happy moment" since winning 1.9 million pounds in the United Kingdom lottery. All Callie wanted to do was to live modestly and provide well for her foster parents. She did go on a trip abroad and spent some money on relatives and friends, but soon she found herself being fooled by friends and boyfriends and having fights with people she was close to--over money. "Two months ago I thought I was the luckiest teenager in Britain. But today I can say I have never felt so miserable."
The majority of lottery winners (55%) say that they are happier because they are more secure about their financial future and have fewer worries. Yet those who have won lesser amount are just as happy after their win than those winning huge amounts.
Researchers say, "It is as much the person's character as well as winning something which is the key to their happiness."
Others think knowledge is most important, so they bury their heads in books. Such people can become eccentric and isolated and lose the ability to form close relationships. Still others think power is the way to happiness. Their way of life is to try to dominate others. Such people are often deeply insecure and paranoid. Some people long to be famous. But many famous people have said they found life empty and meaningless; that they lost their way in life once they became famous. A notable example is rock star Kurt Cobain, who ended his own life after the pressures of fame made him miserable.
If we look at the question more deeply, we will realize that the most precious thing in life is love. No matter how wealthy, knowledgeable, powerful or famous you may be, unless you have someone with whom you can share your joy, your sorrow, your opinions, and your ideals, you are in truth poor.
Ultimately, each of us seeks a person with whom we can share our heart:
Eventually we want to find someone we can marry and have a family with. Such love is the source of the deepest joy and happiness. Love is the highest value, because love is the source of life itself.
Along with love and life, we also want to have an ideal, something beyond ourselves for which to live, strive and maybe even give our lives to. When we have love, life and an ideal, everything seems possible and worthwhile. Without them, life is empty and meaningless. Then people begin to look for other ways to fill the void, such as through drinking, sex, food, money, power or knowledge.
What is it that we want?
What do you really want in life? What do you want to achieve and accomplish? What kind of person do you want to become? We have already asked these questions several times, so perhaps we can now draw a few conclusions. In the end, we can say that each person is seeking to achieve the following basic life goals:
• to grow up and become a person of mature character;
• to marry and have a loving family
• to make a worthwhile and lasting contribution to society
These are all creative acts. It is an astonishing fact that we create our own character. Our bodies will naturally grow to be fully mature human beings. But becoming a mature person on the inside involves our responsibility and choices.
Within us is the yearning to fulfill our potential and become persons of mature character, the first life goal. Sadly, many people, for one reason or another, never do this. They give up when faced by challenges they think they can’t overcome or they simply are not motivated to develop themselves. Instead of putting love and virtue at the center of their life, they allow negative emotions like greed, resentment, laziness or revenge to guide their decisions and actions.
Although we have the ability and responsibility to create our own selves, we cannot do this alone. In the chapter on relationships, you will remember we talked about how everything has two complementary purposes—an individual and whole purpose. We accomplish our individual purpose by living for the whole purpose, which requires developing healthy relationships with others—the second basic life goal.
It is in the family that we learn how to form relationships, through which we discover our own identity and develop our character. From the position of a child, sibling, spouse and parent, we learn how to love and be loved, to forgive and be forgiven, to disagree and be reconciled, to give and receive. We learn how to behave and have good manners. Through our family life, we learn how to make relationships and friendships too, which also help us to mature our character. A mature character is the foundation to achieve our second goal in life: to marry and create a loving family. Anthropologists have found that all human societies, everywhere in the world and throughout history, have had marriage and family as their basic social unit. The vast majority of human beings marries and has families. This would indicate that it is a natural human drive and desire—a basic life goal.
Loving families are not only important to us as individuals; they are the foundation for creating good communities, societies, nations, and a better world.
"Almost everybody in the world gets married--you know what I mean? In our town there aren't hardly any exceptions. Most everybody in the world climbs into their graves married." - Our Town, a play by Thornton Wilder
The third basic goal in life is to contribute something of value to our society and the natural world with our creative talents and professional skills. We love to experience the beauty of nature. We also seek to utilize the material resources of our world to create and play musical instruments, to sculpt, to paint, to design, and to build things. Creating gives us joy because it gives expression to our character and dreams. We also hope that what we create will please others. Nearly every artist looks forward to the day when he can hold an exhibition of his work and have it appreciated by others. People want to find fulfillment through their work, whether as a teacher, factory worker, farmer or businessman. They want to feel that they can create something, which is good and valued by others.
These three fundamental life goals encompass the entire realm of human experience. They present us with a standard and model of moral excellence we should all strive to fulfill. Attaining them involves practicing virtues, the most encompassing of which is altruistic or true love—love which seeks the benefit of others rather than just ourselves. In the coming lessons we will explore how to achieve each of these life goals.
Questions for Discussion
Exercise: “The Wrong Purpose”
The following story is a fictionalized account:
A plane is flying somewhere over the vast rain forest near the Amazon River in South America. Suddenly an engine explodes, ripping a big whole in the bottom of the plane where the cargo is stored. Many suitcases and bags fall out of the plane into the impenetrable jungle of tropical plants and trees. A few seconds later another much bigger explosion occurs, totally ripping the plane apart. Nobody survives the plane crash.
Now it happens that in this part of the rain forest there lives a tribe of natives that has never been discovered by the outside world. The tribe, for its part, has no idea that there exists such a thing as an outside world. They believe that all these suitcases and bags that suddenly fall like rain from the sky are a gift from the gods.
As they start to investigate these heavenly gifts, however, they are not always so sure how best to use them. For instance, they find a guitar without any strings that—packed safely as it was in a strong case— miraculously survived intact the impact with the ground. The natives try several uses for the guitar. First, they use it as a tool to catch butterflies, then as a paddle for their canoes, and finally as a club to chase down monkeys. None of this works very well, and eventually the guitar breaks apart. The pieces are then used as firewood. The guitar strings, which the natives find neatly rolled up in a packet inside the case, come in more handy. One girl immediately recognizes the value of these strings and, after a while, many girls in the village are wearing them as necklaces, some with computer disks or music cassettes strung on them.
One clever boy discovers how to pull film out of its cartridge but then can’t figure out what to do with it. An old man who finds a camera is fond of music and becomes really fascinated by the metallic click of the shutter each time he winds up the camera and then pushes the release. The camera immediately becomes his favorite musical instrument. Not quite as happy is a girl who finds a pair of skates. Even though she has never seen shoes before, she quickly figures out that the skates are meant to be put on one's feet. But as she is trying to climb a tree wearing the skates, which to her look like some kind of claws, she falls down and breaks her leg. Even more unfortunate are two boys who find a gun in a briefcase. As they investigate it, one boy pulls the trigger and the bullet strikes the other boy in the shoulder. Many of the natives are witnesses to this incident, causing the tribe to break into a panic.
The medicine men discuss the event and decide that the gun is a god that has become angry. They call it "Boom-Boom". In order not to upset Boom-Boom again, they start to worship the gun and make offerings to it every day.
All these useful things became useless and even harmful in the hands of those who did not understand the purpose of them.
Questions for Discussion
1. Can you think of some other things that would be damaged or malfunction if they were not used for the purpose for which they were created? Be specific.
2. If all man-made items have been created for a specific purpose, could it be that human beings themselves were created for a specific purpose?
Reflection Exercise: “Fulfilling Your Purpose in Life”
Reflect on the ways in which you are seeking to fulfill the three purposes of life as described in this lesson. How have you been doing so far? How do you foresee yourself fulfilling these purposes in the future? Are you strong in some of these and weak in others? Where do you feel you need to make more effort.